the story started like this. After graduation i started my work in LA and lived alone. i thought of getting an alarm system and my parents asked me to do that too, but i was not that serious about it. One day, i received a call, telling me that someone was in my house. i was worried and rushed into home, finding out that my house got robbed. I knew if i will not sleep well and worried my home would be robbed again if i don't buy a security system.. so i went to looking into local stores and searched online, and finally got one. pretty easy to install. now i feel safe again. and i can have a good sleep at night. a security camera may cost you much, but don't have one will cost you more. from this experience, i also learned some security cameras self-installing knowledge. if anyone is interested, i would like to share.

Anyway your alarm can help keep you safer and notify you sooner and possibly scare away the person but it won't 100% prevent you from ever getting robbed or broken into again.

It may not be 100% preventative but it comes real close, especially if you have signs displayed announcing an alarm system.

I have a friend who was hit twice in 2 months before installing an alarm.

His 13 year old daughter came home from school, she entered the house, went to the bathroom with the door open while the bad guys were in the house. She didn't know why the electronics were piled by the back door.

She exited the house to get the mail and when she turned back saw 2 guys in the house. She went to neignbors, called police but they got away. 2 months later thieves struck again.

I don't know how many alarms are sold immediately after a break in but it had to be high.

The sign does 98% of the work and your neighbours without an alarm/sign do the other 1%... Then you have the 1% that don't give a crap if you have an alarm or not but you usually have to flash something expensive or leave a door or window open or something to get that kind of attention.

I think most people who don't believe in having an alarm come over (and sometimes go overboard) after a break in.

While setting an alarm is certainly a decent habit to have, I'm pretty sure that an intelligent burglar is going to do some research and observation first. However, an alarm system will surely be helpful, especially when it's combined with an illusion that someone's actually home.

I'm pretty sure that an intelligent burglar is going to do some research and observation first.

I don't disagree about the intelligent (or professional, or conscientious) burglar, but I've gone behind plenty of stupid and careless burglars in my career, who just forced open a window or smashed glass, even though the yard signs were there and minimal "research" (looking through glass by the front door) would have shown it wasn't a bluff. Competent burglars are the exception rather than the rule, and they're rare.

There's not a high bar to get over to be in that profession, even if it's only temporary before becoming a Ward of the State.

One of my most memorable calls was after an intruder climbed a tree to get into a 2nd floor patio door that wasn't on the alarm system. (The tree had been a small sapling when the system was installed.) S/he forced open the patio door successfully without tripping the alarm--and then walked downstairs, right into the field of a PIR. So...intelligent enough to get in quietly, but not very knowledgeable about alarm systems--like most burglars.

S/He'd probably been ready to ransack the house looking for valuables, but when the alarm sounded, s/he grabbed the first light electronics handy, a VHS recorder (this was a long time ago, obviously) and ran out the front door and off into the night.

The kicker was, the family was out of the country on vacation and dad had forgotten to lock the safe in the closet of the master bedroom. He'd closed the door and turned the handle to latch it, but hadn't spun the dial to lock it, a bad habit shared by a lot of people with safes. (It's just too _inconvenient_ to have to go through dialing their safe door open every time.) So in that instance, an alarm system let a VHS get stolen, but saved a lot of expensive diamond jewelry, not to mention a ransacked house before the burglar found the unlocked safe.

Anybody ever see the 1987 movie "Burglar" starring Whoopi Goldberg? It's one of the very few movies that has a scene _that's_actually_accurate_, of an burglar circumventing an alarm system. In 1987, there were a couple (that I know of) of state-of-the-art systems with keypads that a knowledgeable burglar could defeat to disarm or disable at the keypad. In Whoopi's case, it looked like she defeated an Ademco 5241 keypad, which in that day, did the decoding and disarming _in the keypad itself_ (unlike all modern systems), and allowed her (in the movie) to short two points on the KP's PCB and disarm the alarm system. That could actually be done in 1987.

The reason I mention this is that the home home I mentioned above had a 5241 keypad at the front door (I forget the control panel, it might have been an Ademco 1023 Alarm Processing Center--it was one of the APCs). So this burglar was intelligent enough to get into the house by climbing a tree, but hadn't done the research to know that if s/he'd forced the front door, s/he could have defeated the keypad during the Entry Delay time, and had all night to search the house for valuables.

In fact, I'm compelled to infer that darned few burglars have done the research they would need to circumvent alarm systems, because in approximately 40 years of working in the alarm industry, I haven't personally come across a single case of a burglar actually doing it, nor heard of such a case from my colleagues. I've gone on many service calls where (1) the alarm system _stopped_ a burglary, and (2) a place was burglarized because (a) the alarm system coverage was inadequate ( the burglar lucked out); or (b) the User forgot/neglected to arm the system (the burglar lucked out); or (3) the system was old and poorly maintained (usually commercial/institutional) and part of the system was inoperative (the burglar lucked out). (Lots of stories there I won't bore you with.) I never worked for A*T, so I don't know how often those "$99 Installed" Two-Contacts-and-a-Motion Systems got hit, because there's no house that can be adequately covered with two contacts and a motion. Maybe a high-rise apartment with one door, but not a house.

But I've never once gone behind a burglary where the burglar managed to _circumvent/defeat_ the alarm system. I have no doubt that in a nation of 300 million people, there are some burglars who _have_ done their homework and research and know how to defeat some alarm systems; but it's rare enough that I never went behind _one_ in the Washington DC Metro Area in 40 years. There are probably a few cases out there somewhere, but they're at least _that_ rare.

Anybody ever see the 1987 movie "Burglar" starring Whoopi Goldberg? It's one of the very few movies that has a scene _that's_actually_accurate_, of an burglar circumventing an alarm system. DC Metro Area in 40 years. There are probably a few cases out there somewhere, but they're at least _that_ rare.

I enjoyed the TV series "It Takes a Thief" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Takes_a_Thief_(2005_TV_series) ). The two hosts were reformed "professional" residential burglars who would "case" neighborhoods, pick a target (including those with security systems), approach the homeowners and get approval to burglarize their homes. So with the forewarning, they'd wait a couple days for the homeowners to let their guard down and return to their normal routine and then hit them, recording the entire "crime". They'd then wait for the homeowners to return to find the place trashed to some extent. Then replay the whole crime for them to truly understand how quickly a burglary takes place. They'd take them to where they stored the "loot" (which even included automobiles). Then as a thank you, they'd install a current alarm system, often times a CCTV system, and upgraded lock hardware.

Pretty realistic series that I wished had lasted longer than two seasons.

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1993-1995 Worked for one of the "nationals" / 1996-Present Independent dealerSystems supported: DSC, Ademco/Honeywell, ITI/GE/Interlogix-----------------------------To the world you may be one person, but to one person you are the world.- Kidney transplant recipient 04/27/2011